The Lovels of Arden by M. E. Braddon

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The lamps of the Great Northern Terminus at King's Cross had not long beenlighted, when a cab deposited a young lady and her luggage at the departureplatform. It was an October twilight, cold and gray, and the place hada cheerless and dismal aspect to that solitary young traveller, to whomEnglish life and an English atmosphere were somewhat strange.

She had been seven years abroad, in a school near Paris; rather anexpensive seminary, where the number of pupils was limited, the masters andmistresses, learned in divers modern accomplishments, numerous, and thedietary of foreign slops and messes without stint.

Dull and gray as the English sky seemed to her, and dreary as was theaspect of London in October, this girl was glad to return to her nativeland. She had felt herself very lonely in the French school, forgotten anddeserted by her own kindred, a creature to be pitied; and hers was a natureto which pity was a torture. Other girls had gone home to England for theirholidays; but vacation after vacation went by, and every occasion broughtClarissa Lovel the same coldly worded letter from her father, telling herthat it was not convenient for him to receive her at home, that he hadheard with pleasure of her progress, and that experienced people with whomhe had conferred, had agreed with him that any interruption to the regularcourse of her studies could not fail to be a disadvantage to her in thefuture.

"They are all going home except me, papa," she wrote piteously on oneoccasion, "and I feel as if I were different from them, somehow. Do letme come home to Arden for this one year. I don't think my schoolfellowsbelieve me when I talk of home, and the gardens, and the dear old park. Ihave seen it in their faces, and you cannot think how hard it is to bear.And I want to see you, papa. You must not fancy that, because I speak ofthese things, I am not anxious for that. I do want to see you very much.By-and-by, when I am grown up, I shall seem a stranger to you."

To this letter, and to many such, letters, Mr. Lovel's reply was always thesame. It did not suit his convenience that his only daughter should returnto England until her education was completed. Perhaps it would have suitedhim better could she have remained away altogether; but he did not say asmuch as that; he only let her see very clearly that there was no pleasurefor him in the prospect of her return.

And yet she was glad to go back. At the worst it was going home. She toldherself again and again, in those meditations upon her future life whichwere not so happy as a girl's reveries should be,--she told herself thather father must come to love her in time. She was ready to love him so muchon her part; to be so devoted, faithful, and obedient, to bear so much fromhim if need were, only to be rewarded with his affection in the end.

So at eighteen years of age Clarissa Lovel's education was finished, andshe came home alone from a quiet little suburban village just outsideParis, and having arrived to-night at the Great Northern Station, King'sCross, had still a long journey before her.

Mr. Lovel lived near a small town called Holborough, in the depths ofYorkshire; a dreary little town enough, but boasting several estates ofconsiderable importance in its neighbourhood. In days gone by, the Lovelshad been people of high standing in this northern region, and Clarissa hadyet to learn how far that standing was diminished.

She had been seated about five minutes in a comfortable corner of afirst-class carriage, with a thick shawl over her knees, and all her littlegirlish trifles of books and travelling, bags gathered about her, and shehad begun to flatter herself with the pleasing fancy that she was to havethe compartment to herself for the first stage of the journey, perhaps forthe whole of the journey, when a porter flung open the door with a bustlingair, and a gentleman came in, with more travelling-rugs, canes, andumbrellas, russia leather bags, and despatch boxes, than Clarissa had everbefore beheld a traveller encumbered with. He came into the carriage veryquietly, however, in spite of these impedimenta, arranged his belongings ina methodical manner, and without the slightest inconvenience to MissLovel, and then seated himself next the door, upon the farther side of thecarriage.

Clarissa looked at him rather anxiously, wondering whether they two were tobe solitary companions throughout the whole of that long night journey. Shehad no prudish horror of such a position, only a natural girlish shyness inthe presence of a stranger.

The traveller was a man of about thirty, tall, broad-shouldered, with longarms, and powerful-looking hands, ungloved, and bronzed a little by sun andwind. There was the same healthy bronze upon his face, Clarissa perceived,when he took off his hat, and hung it up above him; rather a handsome face,with a long straight nose, dark blue eyes with thick brown eyebrows, a wellcut mouth and chin, and a thick thatch of crisp dark brown hair wavinground a broad, intelligent-looking forehead. The firm, full upper lip washalf-hidden by a carefully trained moustache; and in his dress and bearingthe stranger had altogether a military air: one could fancy him a cavalrysoldier. That bare muscular hand seemed made to grasp the massive hilt of asabre.

His expression was grave--grave and a little proud, Clarissa thought;and, unused as she was to lonely wanderings in this outer world, she feltsomehow that this man was a gentleman, and that she need be troubled by nofear that he would make is presence in any way unpleasant to her, let theirjourney together last as long as it would.

She sank back into her corner with a feeling of relief. It would have beenmore agreeable for her to have had the carriage to herself; but if she mustneeds have a companion, there was nothing obnoxious in this one.

For about an hour they sped on in silence. This evening train was notexactly an express, but it was a tolerably quick train, and the stoppageswere not frequent. The dull gray twilight melted into a fair tranquilnight. The moon rose early; and the quiet English landscape seemed veryfair to Clarissa Lovel in that serene light. She watched the shadowy fieldsflitting past; here and there a still pool, or a glimpse of running water;beyond, the sombre darkness of wooded hills; and above that dark backgrounda calm starry sky. Who shall say what dim poetic thoughts were in her mindthat night, as she looked at these things? Life was so new to her, thefuture such an unknown country--a paradise perhaps, or a drear gloomywaste, across which she must travel with bare bleeding feet. How should sheknow? She only knew that she was going home to a father who had never lovedher, who had deferred the day of her coming as long as it was possible forhim decently to do so.

The traveller in the opposite corner of the carriage glanced at Miss Lovelnow and then as she looked out of the window. He could just contrive tosee her profile, dimly lighted by the flickering oil lamp; a very perfectprofile, he thought; a forehead that was neither too high nor too low, asmall aquiline nose, a short upper lip, and the prettiest mouth and chin inthe world. It was just a shade too pensive now, the poor little mouth, hethought pityingly; and be wondered what it was like when it smiled. Andthen he began to arrange his lines for winning the smile he wanted so muchto see from those thoughtful lips. It was, of course, for the gratificationof the idlest, most vagabond curiosity that he was eager to settle thisquestion: but then on such a long dreary journey, a man may be forgiven fora good deal of idle curiosity.

He wondered who his companion was, and how she came to be travelling alone,so young, so pretty, so much in need of an escort. There was nothing in hercostume to hint at poverty, nor does poverty usually travel in first-classcarriages. She might have her maid lurking somewhere in the second-class,he said to himself. In any case, she was a lady. He had no shadow of doubtabout that.

She was tall, above the ordinary height of women. There was a grace in thelong flowing lines of her figure more striking than the beauty of her face.The long slim throat, the sloping shoulder, not to be disguised even bythe clumsy folds of a thick shawl--these the traveller noted, in a lazycontemplative mood, as he lolled in his corner, meditating an easy openingfor a conversation with his fair fellow-voyager.

He let some little time slip by in this way, being a man to whom haste wasalmost unknown. This idle artistic consideration of Miss Level's beauty wasa quiet kind of enjoyment for him. She, for her part, seemed absorbedin watching the landscape--a very commonplace English landscape in thegentleman's eyes--and was in no way disturbed by his placid admiration.

He had a heap of newspapers and magazines thrown pell-mell into the emptyseat next him; and arousing himself with a faint show of effort presently,he began to turn these over with a careless hand.

The noise of his movements startled Clarissa; she looked across at him, andtheir eyes met. This was just what he wanted. He had been curious to seeher eyes. They were hazel, and very beautiful, completing the charm of herface.

"May I offer you some of these things?" he said. "I have a reading lampin one of my bags, which I will light for you in a moment. I won't pledgemyself for your finding the magazines very amusing, but anything is betterthan the blankness of a long dreary journey."

"Thank you, you are very kind; but I don't care about reading to-night; Icould not give you so much trouble."

"Pray don't consider that. It is not a question of a moments trouble. I'lllight the lamp, and then you can do as you like about the magazines."

He stood up, unlocked one of his travelling-bags, the interior of whichglittered like a miniature arsenal, and took out a lamp, which he lightedin a rapid dexterous manner, though without the faintest appearance ofhaste, and fixed with a brass apparatus of screws and bolts to the armof Clarissa's seat. Then he brought her a pile of magazines, which shereceived in her lap, not a little embarrassed by this unexpected attention.He had called her suddenly from strange vague dreams of the future, and itwas not easy to come altogether back to the trivial commonplace present.

She thanked him graciously for his politeness, but she had not smiled yet.

"Never mind," the traveller said to himself; "that will come in good time."

He had the easiest way of taking all things in life, this gentleman; andhaving established Clarissa with her lamp and books, sank lazily back intohis corner, and gave himself up to a continued contemplation of the fairyoung face, almost as calmly as if it had been some masterpiece of thepainter's art in a picture gallery.

The magazines were amusing to Miss Lovel. They beguiled her away from thoseshapeless visions of days to come. She began to read, at first with verylittle thought of the page before her, but, becoming interested by degrees,read on until her companion grew tired of the silence.

He looked at his watch--the prettiest little toy in gold and enamel, withelaborate monogram and coat of arms--a watch that looked like a woman'sgift. They had been nearly three hours on their journey.

"I do not mean to let you read any longer," he said, changing his seat toone opposite Clarissa. "That lamp is very well for an hour or so, but afterthat time the effect upon one's eyesight is the reverse of beneficial. Ihope your book is not very interesting."

"If you will allow me to finish this story," Clarissa pleaded, scarcelylifting her eyes from the page. It was not particularly polite, perhaps,but it gave the stranger an admirable opportunity for remarking the darkthick lashes, tinged with the faintest gleam of gold, and the perfect curveof the full white eyelids.

"Upon my soul, she is the loveliest creature I ever saw," he said tohimself; and then asked persistently, "Is the story a long one?"

"Only about half-dozen pages more; O, do please let me finish it!"

"You want to know what becomes of some one, or whom the heroine marries, ofcourse. Well, to that extent I will be a party to the possible injury ofyour sight."

He still sat opposite to her, watching her in the old lazy way, while sheread the last few pages of the magazine story. When she came to the end,a fact of which he seemed immediately aware, he rose and extinguished thelittle reading lamp, with an air of friendly tyranny.

"Merciless, you see," he said, laughing. "O, _la jeunesse_, what adelicious thing it is! Here have I been tossing and tumbling thoseunfortunate books about for a couple of hours at a stretch, without beingable to fix my attention upon a single page; and here are you so profoundlyabsorbed in some trivial story, that I daresay you have scarcely beenconscious of the outer world for the last two hours. O, youth andfreshness, what pleasant things they are while we can keep them!"

"We were not allowed to read fiction at Madame Marot's," Miss Lovelanswered simply. "Anything in the way of an English story is a treat whenone has had nothing to read but Racine and Telemaque for about six years ofone's life."

"The Inimical Brothers, and Iphigenia; Athalie, as performed before LouisQuatorze, by the young ladies of St. Cyr, and so on. Well, I confessthere are circumstances under which even Racine might become a bore; andTelemaque has long been a synonym for dreariness and dejection of mind.You have not seen Rachel? No, I suppose not. She was a great creature, andconjured the dry bones into living breathing flesh. And Madame Marot'sestablishment, where you were so hardly treated, is a school, I conclude?"

"Yes, it is a school at Belforet, near Paris. I have been there a longtime, and am going home now to keep house for papa."

"Indeed! And is your journey a long one? Are we to be travelling companionsfor some time to come?"

"I am going rather a long way--to Holborough."

"I am very glad to hear that, for I am going farther myself, to the outeredge of Yorkshire, where I believe I am to do wonderful execution upon thebirds. A fellow I know has taken a shooting-box yonder, and writes me mostflourishing accounts of the sport. I know Holborough a little, by the way.Does your father live in the town?"

"O, no; papa could never endure to live in a small country town. Our houseis a couple of miles away--Arden Court; perhaps you know it?"

"Yes, I have been to Arden Court," the traveller answered, with rather apuzzled air. "And your papa lives at Arden?--I did not know he had anyother daughter," he added in a lower key, to himself rather than to hiscompanion. "Then I suppose I have the pleasure of speaking to Miss--"

"My name is Lovel My father is Marmaduke Level, of Arden Court."

The traveller looked at her with a still more puzzled air, as if singularlyembarrassed by this simple announcement. He recovered himself quickly,however, with a slight effort.

"I am proud and happy to have made your acquaintance, Miss Lovel," he said;"your father's family is one of the best and oldest in the North Riding."

After this, they talked of many things; of Clarissa's girlish experiencesat Belforet; of the traveller's wanderings, which seemed to have extendedall over the world.

He had been a good deal in India, in the Artillery, and was likely toreturn thither before long.

"I had rather an alarming touch of sunstroke a year ago," he said, "and wasaltogether such a shattered broken-up creature when I came home on sickleave, that my mother tried her hardest to induce me to leave the service;but though I would do almost anything in the world to please her, I couldnot bring myself to do that; a man without a profession is such a lostwretch. It is rather hard upon her, poor soul; for my elder brother diednot very long ago, and she has only my vagabond self left. 'He was the onlyson of his mother, and she was a widow.'"

"I have no mother," Clarissa said mournfully; "mine died when I was quite alittle thing. I always envy people who can speak of a mother."

"But, on the other hand, I am fatherless, you see," the gentleman said,smiling. But Clarissa's face did not reflect his smile.

"Ah, that is a different thing," she said softly.

They went on talking for a long while, talking about the widest range ofsubjects; and their flight across the moonlit country, which grew darkerby-and-by, as that tender light waned, seemed swifter than. Clarissa couldhave imagined possible, had the train been the most desperate thing in theway of an express. She had no vulgar commonplace shyness, mere school-girlas she was, and she had, above all, a most delightful unconsciousness ofher own beauty; so she was quickly at home with the stranger, listening tohim, and talking to him with a perfect ease, which seemed to him a naturalattribute of high breeding.

"A Lovel," he said to himself once, in a brief interval of silence; "and soshe comes of that unlucky race. It is scarcely strange that she should bebeautiful and gifted. I wonder what my mother would say if she knew that mynorthern journey had brought me for half-a-dozen hours _tete-a-tete_ witha Lovel? There would be actual terror for her in the notion of such anaccident. What a noble look this girl has!--an air that only comes aftergenerations of blue blood untainted by vulgar admixture. The last of sucha race is a kind of crystallisation, dangerously, fatally brilliant, theconcentration of all the forces that have gone before."

At one of their halting-places, Miss Lovel's companion insisted uponbringing her a cup of coffee and a sponge-cake, and waited upon her with amost brotherly attention. At Normanton they changed to a branch line, andhad to wait an hour and a half in that coldest dreariest period of thenight that comes before daybreak. Here the stranger established Clarissa ina shabby little waiting-room, where he made up the fire with his own hands,and poked it into a blaze with his walking-stick; having done which, hewent out into the bleak night and paced the platform briskly for nearly anhour, smoking a couple of those cigars which would have beguiled his nightjourney, had he been alone.

He had some thoughts of a third cigar, but put it back into his case, andreturned to the waiting-room.

"I'll go and have a little more talk with the prettiest woman I ever met inmy life," he said to himself. "It is not very likely that we two shall eversee each other again. Let me carry away the memory of her face, at anyrate. And she is a Lovel! Will she be as unfortunate as the rest of herrace, I wonder? God forbid!"

Clarissa was sitting by the fire in the dingy little waiting-room, with oneelbow resting on the arm of her chair, her chin leaning on her hand, andher eyes fixed thoughtfully upon a dull red chasm in the coals. She hadtaken off her gray felt hat, and she looked older without it, the travellerthought, in spite of her wealth of waving dark brown hair, gathered into agreat coil of plaits at the back of the graceful head. Perhaps it was thatthoughtful expression which made her look older than she had seemed to himin the railway carriage, the gentleman argued with himself; a very graveanxious expression for a girl's face. She had indeed altogether theaspect of a woman, rather than of a girl who had just escaped fromboarding-school, and to whom the cares of life must needs be unknown.

She was thinking so deeply, that she did not hear the opening of the door,or her fellow-traveller's light footstep as he crossed the room. He wasstanding on the opposite side of the fireplace, looking down at her, beforeshe was aware of his presence. Then she raised her head with a start; andhe saw her blush for the first time. "You must have been absorbed in someprofound meditation, Miss Lovel," he said lightly.

"I was thinking of the future."

"Meaning your own future. Why, at your age the future ought to be a mostradiant vision."

"Indeed it is not that. It is all clouds and darkness. I do not see thatone must needs be happy because one is young. There has been very littlehappiness in my life yet awhile, only the dreary monotonous routine ofboarding-school."

"But all that is over now, and life is just beginning for you. I wish Iwere eighteen instead of eight-and-twenty."

"Would you live your life over again?"

The traveller laughed.

"That's putting a home question," he said. "Well, perhaps not exactly thesame life, though it has not been a bad one. But I should like the feelingof perfect youth, the sense of having one's full inheritance of life lyingat one's banker's, as it were, and being able to draw upon the account alittle recklessly, indifferent as to the waste of a year or two. You seeI have come to a period of existence in which a man has to calculate hisresources. If I do not find happiness within the next five years, I amnever likely to find it at all. At three-and-thirty a man has done with aheart, in a moral and poetic sense, and begins to entertain vague alarms onthe subject of fatty degeneration."

Clarissa smiled faintly, as if the stranger's idle talk scarcely beguiledher from her own thoughts.

"You said you had been at Arden," she began rather abruptly; "then you mustknow papa."

"No, I have not the honour to know Mr. Lovel," with the same embarrassedair which he had exhibited before in speaking of Arden Court. "But I amacquainted--or I was acquainted, rather, for he and I have not met for sometime--with one member of your family, a Mr. Austin Lovel."

"My brother," Clarissa said quickly, and with a sudden shadow upon herface.

"Your brother; yes, I supposed as much."

"Poor Austin! It is very sad. Papa and he are ill friends. There was somedesperate quarrel between them a few years ago; I do not even know whatabout; and Austin was turned out of doors, never to come back any more.Papa told me nothing about it, though it was the common talk at Holborough.It was only from a letter of my aunt's that I learnt what had happened; andI am never to speak of Austin when I go home, my aunt told me."

"Very hard lines," said the stranger, with a sympathetic air. "He was wild,I suppose, in the usual way. Your brother was in a line regiment when Iknew him; but I think I heard afterwards that he had sold out, and haddropped away from his old set, had emigrated, I believe, or something ofthat kind exactly the thing I should do, if I found myself in difficulties;turn backwoodsman, and wed some savage woman, who should rear my duskyrace, and whose kindred could put me in the way to make my fortune bycattle-dealing; having done which, I should, of course, discover that fiftyyears of Europe are worth more than a cycle of Cathay, and should turn mysteps homeward with a convenient obliviousness upon the subject of thesavage woman."

He spoke lightly, trying to win Clarissa from her sad thoughts, and withthe common masculine idea, that a little superficial liveliness of thiskind can lighten the load of a great sorrow.

"Come, Miss Lovel, I would give the world to see you smile. Do you knowthat I have been watching for a smile ever since I first saw your face, andhave not surprised one yet? Be sure your brother is taking life pleasantlyenough in some quarter of the globe. We worthless young fellows alwayscontrive to fall upon our feet."

"If I could believe that he was happy, if I could think that he was leadingan honourable life anywhere, I should not feel our separation so much," thegirl said mournfully; "but to be quite ignorant of his fate, and not to beallowed to mention his name, that is hard to bear. I cannot tell you howfond I was of him when we were children. He was seven years older than I,and so clever. He wanted to be a painter, but papa would not hear of that.Yet I think he might have been happier if he had been allowed to have hisown way. He had a real genius for art."

"And you too are fond of art, I suppose?" hazarded the traveller, moreinterested in the young lady herself than in this reprobate brother ofhers.

"Yes, I am very fond of it. It is the only thing I really care for. Ofcourse, I like music to a certain extent; but I love painting with my wholeheart."

"Happy art, to be loved by so fair a votary! And you dabble with brushesand colours, of course?"

"A little."

"A true young lady's answer. If you were a Raffaelle in glace silk andcrinoline, you would tell me no more than that. I can only hope that somehappy accident will one day give me an opportunity of judging for myself.And now, I think, you had better put on your hat. Our train will be inalmost immediately."

She obeyed him; and they went out together to the windy platform, wherethe train rumbled in presently. They took their places in a carriage, thegentleman bundling in his rugs and travelling-bags and despatch boxeswith very little ceremony; but this time they were not alone. A plethoricgentleman, of the commercial persuasion, was sleeping laboriously in onecorner.

The journey to Holborough lasted a little less than an hour. Miss Loveland her companion did not talk much during that time. She was tired andthoughtful, and he respected her silence. As she drew nearer home, thehappiness she had felt in her return seemed to melt away somehow, leavingvague anxieties and morbid forebodings in its stead. To go home to a fatherwho would only be bored by her coming. It was not a lively prospect for agirl of eighteen.

The dull cold gray dawn was on the housetops of Holborough, as the trainstopped at the little station. The traveller alighted, and assistedClarissa's descent to the platform.

"Can I see about your luggage, Miss Lovel?" he asked; but looking upat that moment, the girl caught sight of a burly gentleman in a whiteneckcloth, who was staring in every direction but the right one.

"Then I can only say good-bye. That tiresome engine is snorting with afiendish impatience to bear me away. Good-bye, Miss Lovel, and a thousandthanks for the companionship that has made this journey so pleasant to me."

He lifted his hat and went back to the carriage, as the stout gentlemanapproached Clarissa. He would fain have shaken hands with her, butrefrained from that unjustifiable familiarity. And so, in the bleak earlyautumnal dawn, they parted.

* * * * *

CHAPTER II.

BEGINNING THE WORLD.

"Who on earth was that man you were talking to, Clary?" asked the ReverendMathew Oliver, when he had seen his niece's luggage carried off to a fly,and was conducting her to that vehicle. "Is it any one you know?"

"O, no, uncle; only a gentleman who travelled in the same carriage with mefrom London. He was very kind."

"You seemed unaccountably familiar with him," said Mr. Oliver with anaggrieved air; "you ought to be more reserved, my dear, at your age. Ayoung lady travelling alone cannot be too careful. Indeed, it was verywrong of your father to allow you to make this long journey alone. Youraunt has been quite distressed about it."

Clarissa sighed faintly; but was not deeply concerned by the idea of heraunt's distress. Distress of mind, on account of some outrage of proprietyon the part of her relatives, was indeed almost the normal condition ofthat lady.

"I travelled very comfortably, I assure you, uncle Oliver," Clarissareplied. "No one was in the least rude or unpleasant. And I am so glad tocome home--I can scarcely tell you how glad--though, as I came nearer andnearer, I began to have all kinds of fanciful anxieties. I hope that all iswell--that papa is quite himself."

"O, yes, my dear; your papa is--himself," answered the parson, in a tonethat implied that he did not say very much for Mr. Lovel in admitting thatfact. "Your papa is well enough in health, or as well as he will everacknowledge himself to be. Of course, a man who neither hunts nor shoots,and seldom gets out of bed before ten o'clock in the day, can't expect tobe remarkably robust. But your father will live to a good old age, child,rely upon it, in spite of everything."

"Am I going straight home, uncle?"

"Well, yes. Your aunt wished you to breakfast at the Rectory; but there areyour trunks, you see, and altogether I think it's better for you to go homeat once. You can come and see us as often as you like."

"Thank you, uncle. It was very kind of you to meet me at the station. Yes,I think it will be best for me to go straight home. I'm a little knocked upwith the journey. I haven't slept five minutes since I left Madame Marot'sat daybreak yesterday."

"You're looking rather pale; but you look remarkably well in spite ofthat--remarkably well. These six years have changed you from a child intoa woman. I hope they gave you a good education yonder; a solid practicaleducation, that will stand by you."

"I think so, uncle. We were almost always at our studies. It was very hardwork."

"So much the better. Life is meant to be hard work. You may have occasionto make use of your education some day, Clary."

"Yes," the girl answered with a sigh; "I know that we are poor."

"I suppose so; but perhaps you hardly know how poor."

"Whenever the time comes, I shall be quite ready to work for papa," saidClarissa; yet she could not help wondering how the master of Arden Courtcould ever bring himself to send out his daughter as a governess; andthen she had a vague childish recollection that not tens of pounds, buthundreds, and even thousands, had been wanted to stop the gaps in herfather's exchequer.

They drove through Holborough High Street, where there was the faint stirand bustle of early morning, windows opening, a housemaid kneeling on adoorstep here and there, an occasional tradesman taking down his shutters.They drove past the fringe of prim little villas on the outskirts of thetown, and away along a country road towards Arden; and once more Clarissasaw the things that she had dreamed of so often in her narrow white bed inthe bleak dormitory at Belforet. Every hedge-row and clump of treesfrom which the withered leaves were drifting in the autumn wind, everywhite-walled cottage with moss-grown thatch and rustic garden, woke a faintrapture in her breast. It was home. She remembered her old friends thecottagers, and wondered whether goody Mason were still alive, and whetherWidow Green's fair-haired children would remember her. She had taughtthem at the Sunday-school; but they too must have grown from childhood towomanhood, like herself, and were out at service, most likely, leaving Mrs.Green's cottage lonely.

She thought of these simple things, poor child, having so little else tothink about, on this, her coming home. She was not so foolish as to expectany warm welcome from her father. If he had brought himself just totolerate her coming, she had sufficient reason to be grateful. It was onlya drive of two miles from Holborough to Arden. They stopped at a lodge-gatepresently; a little gothic lodge, which was gay with scarlet geraniumsand chrysanthemums, and made splendid by railings of bronzed ironwork.Everything had a bright new look which surprised Miss Lovel, who wasnot accustomed to see such, perfect order or such fresh paint about herfather's domain.

"How nice everything looks!" she said.

"Yes," answered her uncle, with a sigh; "the place is kept well enoughnowadays."

A woman came out to open the gates--a brisk young person, who was astranger to Clarissa, not the feeble old lodge-keeper she remembered in herchildhood. The change, slight as it was, gave her a strange chill feeling.

"I wonder how many people that I knew are dead?" she thought.

They drove into the park, and here too, even in this autumn season,Clarissa perceived traces of care and order that were strange to her. Thecarriage road was newly gravelled, the chaos of underwood among the oldtrees had disappeared, the broad sweeps of grass were smooth and level asa lawn, and there were men at work in the early morning, planting rarespecimens of the fir tribe in a new enclosure, which filled a space thathad been bared twenty years before by Mr. Lovel's depredations upon thetimber.

All this bewildered Clarissa; but she was still more puzzled, when, insteadof approaching the Court the fly turned sharply into a road leading acrossa thickly wooded portion of the park, through which there was a publicright of way leading to the village of Arden.

"The man is going wrong, uncle!" she exclaimed.

"No, no, my dear; the man is right enough."

"But indeed, uncle Oliver, he is driving to the village."

"And he has been told to drive to the village."

"Not to the Court?"

"To the Court! Why, of course not. What should we have to do at the Courtat half-past seven in the morning?"

"But I am going straight home to papa, am I not?"

"Certainly."

And then, after staring at his niece's bewildered countenance for a fewmoments, Mr. Oliver exclaimed,----

"Why, surely, Clary, your father told you----"

"Told me what, uncle?"

"That he had sold Arden."

"Sold Arden! O, uncle, uncle!"

She burst into tears. Of all things upon this earth she had loved the grandold mansion where her childhood had been spent. She had so little else tolove, poor lonely child, that it was scarcely strange she should attachherself to lifeless things. How fondly she had remembered the old place inall those dreary years of exile, dreaming of it as we dream of some lostfriend. And it was gone from her for ever! Her father had bartered awaythat most precious birthright.

"O, how could he do it! how could he do it!" she cried piteously.

"Why, my dear Clary, you can't suppose it was a matter of choice with him.'Needs must when'--I daresay you know the vulgar proverb. Necessity has nolaw. Come, come, my dear, don't cry; your father won't like to see youwith red eyes. It was very wrong of him not to tell you about the sale ofArden--excessively wrong. But that's just like Marmaduke Lovel; alwaysready to shirk anything unpleasant, even to the writing of a disagreeableletter."

"Poor dear papa! I don't wonder he found it hard to write about such athing; but it would have been better for me to have known. It is such abitter disappointment to come home and find the dear old place gone fromus. Has it been sold very long?"

"About two years. A rich manufacturer bought it--something in the clothway, I believe. He has retired from business, however, and is said to beoverwhelmingly rich. He has spent a great deal of money upon the Courtalready, and means to spend more I hear."

"Has he spoiled it--modernised it, or anything of that kind?"

"No; I am glad to say that he--or his architect perhaps--has had the goodtaste to preserve the mediaeval character of the place. He has restored thestonework, renewing all the delicate external tracery where it was lost ordecayed, and has treated the interior in the same manner. I have dined withMr. Granger once or twice since the work was finished, and I must say theplace is now one of the finest in Yorkshire--perhaps the finest, in itspeculiar way. I doubt if there is so perfect a specimen of gothic domesticarchitecture in the county."

"And it is gone from us for ever!" said Clarissa, with a profound sigh.

"Well, my dear Clary, it is a blow, certainly; I don't deny that. But thereis a bright side to everything; and really your father could not afford tolive in the place. It was going to decay in the most disgraceful manner. Heis better out of it; upon my word he is."

Clarissa could not see this. To lose Arden Court seemed to her unmitigatedwoe. She would rather have lived the dreariest, loneliest life in onecorner of the grand old house, than have occupied a modern palace. It wasas if all the pleasant memories of her childhood had been swept away fromher with the loss of her early home. This was indeed beginning the world;and a blank dismal world it appeared to Clarissa Lovel, on this melancholyOctober morning.

They stopped presently before a low wooden gate, and looking out of thewindow of the fly, Miss Lovel saw a cottage which she remembered as adreary uninhabited place, always to let; a cottage with a weedy garden,and a luxuriant growth of monthly roses and honeysuckle covering it frombasement to roof; not a bad sort of place for a person of small means andpretensions, but O, what a descent from the ancient splendour of ArdenCourt!--that Arden which had belonged to the Lovels ever since the landon which it stood was given to Sir Warren Wyndham Lovel, knight, by hisgracious master King Edward IV., in acknowledgment of that warrior'sservices in the great struggle between Lancaster and York.

There were old-fashioned casement windows on the upper story, and queerlittle dormers in the roof. Below, roomy bows had been added at a muchlater date than the building of the cottage. The principal doorway wassheltered by a rustic porch, spacious and picturesque, with a bench on eachside of the entrance. The garden was tolerably large, and in decent order,and beyond the garden was a fine old orchard, divided from lawn andflower-beds only by a low hedge, full of bush-roses and sweet brier. It wasa very pretty place in summer, not unpicturesque even at this bleak season;but Clarissa was thinking of lost Arden, and she looked at Mill Cottagewith mournful unadmiring eyes. There had been a mill attached to the placeonce. The old building was there still, indeed, converted into a primitivekind of stable; hence its name of Mill Cottage. The stream still rannoisily a little way behind the house, and made the boundary which dividedthe orchard from the lands of the lord of Arden. Mill Cottage was on thevery edge of Arden Court. Clarissa wondered that her father could havepitched his tent on the borders of his lost heritage.

"I think I would have gone to the other end of the world, had I been in hisplace," she said to herself.

An elderly woman-servant came out, in answer to the flyman's summons; andat her call, a rough-looking young man emerged from the wooden gate openinginto a rustic-looking stable-yard, where the lower half of the old millstood, half-hidden by ivy and other greenery, and where there weredovecotes and a dog-kennel.

Mr. Oliver superintended the removal of his niece's trunks, and thenstepped back into the fly.

"There's not the slightest use in my stopping to see your father, Clary,"he said; "he won't show for a couple of hours at least. Good-bye, my dear;make yourself as comfortable as you can. And come and see your aunt as soonas you've recovered from your long journey, and keep up your spirits, mydear.--Martha, be sure you give Miss Lovel a good breakfast.--Drive back tothe Rectory, coachman.--Good-bye, Clarissa;" and feeling that he had shownhis niece every kindness that the occasion required, Mr. Oliver bowledmerrily homewards. He was a gentleman who took life easily--a pastor ofthe broad church--tolerably generous and good to his poor; not given toabnormal services or daily morning prayer; content to do duty at Holboroughparish church twice on a Sunday, and twice more in the week; hunting alittle every season, in a black coat, for the benefit of his health, as hetold his parishioners; and shooting a good deal; fond of a good horse,a good cellar, a good dinner, and well-filled conservatories andglass-houses; altogether a gentleman for whom life was a pleasant journeythrough a prosperous country. He had, some twenty years before, marriedFrances Lovel; a very handsome woman--just a little faded at the timeof her marriage--without fortune. There were no children at HolboroughRectory, and everything about the house and gardens bore that aspect ofperfect order only possible to a domain in which there are none of thosejuvenile destroyers.

"Poor girl," Mr. Oliver muttered to himself, as he jogged comfortablyhomewards, wondering whether his people would have the good sense to cook'those grouse' for breakfast. "Poor Clary, it was very hard upon her; andjust Like Marmaduke not to tell her."

* * * * *

CHAPTER III.

FATHER AND DAUGHTER.

While Mr. Oliver went back to the Rectory, cheered by the prospect ofpossible grouse, Clarissa entered her new home, so utterly strange to herin its insignificance. The servant, Martha, who was a stranger to her, butwho had a comfortable friendly face, she thought, led her into a room atthe back of the cottage, with a broad window opening on to a lawn, beyondwhich Clarissa saw the blue mill-stream. It was not a bad room at all:countrified-looking and old-fashioned, with a low ceiling and wainscotedwalls. Miss Level recognised the ponderous old furniture from thebreakfast-room at Arden--high-backed mahogany chairs of the early Georgianera, with broad cushioned seats covered with faded needlework; a curiousold oval dining-table, capable of accommodating about six; and some slimChippendale coffee-tables and cheffoniers, upon which there were a fewchipped treasures of old Battersea and Bow china. The walls were half-linedwith her father's books--rare old books in handsome bindings. Hiseasy-chair, a most luxurious one, stood in a sheltered corner of thehearth, with a crimson silk banner-screen hanging from the mantelpiecebeside it, and a tiny table close at hand, on which there were a noblesilver-mounted meerschaum, and a curious old china jar for tobacco. Theoval table was neatly laid for breakfast, and a handsome brown setter laybasking in the light of the fire. Altogether, the apartment had a verycomfortable and home-like look.

"The tea's made, miss," said the servant; "and I've a savoury omeletteready to set upon the table. Perhaps you'd Like to step upstairs and takeoff your things before you have your breakfast? Your papa begged youwouldn't wait for him. He won't be down for two hours to come."

"He's quite well, I hope?"

"As well as he ever is, miss. He's a bit of an invalid at the best oftimes."

Remembering what Mr. Oliver had said, Clarissa was not much disturbed bythis intelligence. She was stooping to caress the brown setter, who hadbeen sniffing at her dress, and seemed anxious to inaugurate a friendshipwith her.

"This is a favourite of papa's, I suppose?" she said.

"O Lord, yes, miss. Our master do make a tremenjous fust about Ponto. Ithink he's fonder of that dumb beast than any human creature. Eliza shallshow you your room, miss, while I bring in the teapot and such-like.There's only me and Eliza, who is but a bit of a girl; and John Thomas, thegroom, that brought your boxes in just now. It's a change for your pa fromthe Court, and all the servants he had there; but he do bear it like a trueChristian, if ever there was one."

Clarissa Lovel might have wondered a little to hear this--Christianity notbeing the dominant note in her father's character; but it was only like herfather to refrain from complaint in the hearing of such a person as honestMartha. A rosy-faced girl of about fifteen conducted Miss Lovel to apleasant bedroom, with three small windows; one curiously placed inan angle of the room, and from which--above a sweep of golden-tintedwoodland--Clarissa could see the gothic chimneys of Arden Court. She stoodat this window for nearly ten minutes, gazing out across those autumnalwoods, and wondering how her father had nerved himself for the sacrifice.

She turned away from the little casement at last with a heavy sigh, andbegan to take off her things. She bathed her face and head in coldwater, brushed out her long dark hair, and changed her thick merinotravelling-dress for a fresher costume. While she was doing these things,her thoughts went back to her companion of last night's journey; and, witha sudden flush of shame, she remembered his embarrassed look when she hadspoken of her father as the owner of Arden Court. He had been to Arden, hehad told her, yet had not seen her father. She had not been particularlysurprised by this, supposing that he had gone to the Court as an ordinarysight-seer. Her father had never opened the place to the public, but he hadseldom refused any tourist's request to explore it.

But now she understood that curious puzzled look of the stranger's, andfelt bitterly ashamed of her error. Had he thought her some barefacedimpostor, she wondered? She was disturbed in these reflections by the trimrosy-cheeked house-maid, who came to tell her that breakfast had been onthe table nearly a quarter of an hour. But in the comfortable parlourdownstairs, all the time she was trying to do some poor justice toMartha's omelette, her thoughts dwelt persistently upon the unknown of therailway-carriage, and upon the unlucky mistake which she had made as to herfather's position.

"He could never guess the truth," she said to herself. "He could neverimagine that I was going home, and yet did not know that my birthplace hadbeen sold."

He was so complete a stranger to her--she did not even know his name--so itcould surely matter very little whether he thought well or ill of her.And yet she could not refrain from torturing herself with all manner ofannoying suppositions as to what he might think. Miss Lovel's character wasby no means faultless, and pride was one of the strongest ingredients init. A generous and somewhat lofty nature, perhaps, but unschooled andunchastened as yet.

After a very feeble attempt at breakfast, Clarissa went out into thegarden, closely attended by Ponto, who seemed to have taken a wonderfulfancy to her. She was very glad to be loved by something on her returnhome, even a dog. She went out through the broad window, and exploredgarden and orchard, and wandered up and down by the grassy bank of thestream. She was fain to own that the place was pretty: and she fancied howwell she might have loved it, if she had been born here, and had never beenfamiliar with the broad terraces and verdant slopes of Arden Court. Shewalked in the garden till the village-church clock struck ten, and thenwent hastily in, half-afraid lest her father should have come down to theparlour in her absence, and should be offended at not finding her ready toreceive him.

She need not have feared this. Mr. Lovel was rarely offended by anythingthat did not cause him physical discomfort.

"How do you do, my dear?" he said, as she came into the room, in very muchthe same tone he might have employed had they seen each other every day forthe last twelve months. "Be sure you never do that again, if you have thefaintest regard for me."

"Do what, papa?"

"Leave that window open when you go out. I found the room a perfectice-house just now. It was very neglectful of Martha to allow it. You'dbetter use the door at the end of the passage in future, when you go intothe garden. It's only a little more trouble, and I can't stand open windowsat this time of year."

"I will be sure to do so, papa," Clarissa answered meekly. She went up toher father and kissed him, the warmth and spontaneity of their greeting alittle diminished by this reproof about the window; but Clarissa had notexpected a very affectionate reception, and was hardly disappointed. Shehad only a blank hopeless kind of feeling; a settled conviction that therewas no love for her here, and that there had never been any.

"My dear father," she began tenderly, "my uncle told me about the sale ofArden. I was so shocked by the news--so sorry--for your sake."

"And for your own sake too, I suppose," her father answered bitterly. "Theless this subject is spoken of between us in future, the better we shallget on together, Clarissa."

"I will keep silence, papa."

"Be sure you do so," Mr. Lovel said sternly; and then, with a suddenpassion and inconsistency that startled his daughter, he went on: "Yes, Ihave sold Arden--every acre. Not a rood of the land that has belonged to myrace from generation to generation since Edward IV. was king, is left tome. And I have planted myself here--here at the very gates of my losthome--so that I may drain the bitter cup of humiliation to the dregs. Thefools who call themselves my friends think, that because I can endure tolive here, I am indifferent to all I have lost; that I am an eccentricbookworm--an easy-going philosophical recluse, content to dawdle away theremnant of my days amongst old books. It pleases me to let them thinkso. Why, there is never a day that yonder trader's carriage, passing mywindows, does not seem to drive over my body; not a sound of a woodman'saxe or a carpenter's hammer in the place that was mine, that does not gostraight home to my heart!"

"O, papa, papa!"

"Hush, girl! I can accept pity from no one--from you least of all."

"Not from me, papa--your own child?"

"Not from you; because your mother's reckless extravagance was thebeginning of my ruin. I might have been a different man but for her. Mymarriage was fatal, and in the end, as you see, has wrecked me."

"But even if my mother was to blame, papa--as she may have been--I cannotpretend to deny the truth of what you say, being so completely ignorant ofour past history--you cannot be so cruel as to hold _me_ guilty?"

"You are too like her, Clarissa," Mr. Lovel answered, in a strange tone."But I do not want to speak of these things. It is your fault; you had noright to talk of Arden. _That_ subject always raises a devil in me."

He paced the room backwards and forwards for a few minutes in an agitatedway, as if trying to stifle some passion raging inwardly.

He was a man of about fifty, tall and slim, with a distinguished air, anda face that must once have been very handsome, but perhaps, at its best, alittle effeminate. The face was careworn now, and the delicate featureshad a pinched and drawn look, the thin lips a half-cynical, half-peevishexpression. It was not a pleasant countenance, in spite of its look of highbirth; nor was there any likeness between Marmaduke Lovel and his daughter.His eyes were light blue, large and bright, but with a cold look in them--acoldness which, on very slight provocation, intensified into cruelty; hishair pale auburn, crisp and curling closely round a high but somewhatnarrow forehead.

He came back to the breakfast-table presently, and seated himself in hiseasy-chair. He sipped a cup of coffee, and trifled listlessly with a morselof dried salmon.

"I have no appetite this morning," he said at last, pushing his plate awaywith an impatient gesture; "nor is that kind of talk calculated to improvethe flavour of a man's breakfast. How tall you have grown, Clarissa, aperfect woman; remarkably handsome too! Of course you know that, and thereis no fear of your being made vain by anything I may say to you. All youngwomen learn their value soon enough. You ought to make a good match, abrilliant match--if there were any chance for a girl in such a hole asthis. Marriage is your only hope, remember, Clarissa. Your future liesbetween that and the drudgery of a governess's life. You have received anexpensive education--an education that will serve you in either case; andthat is all the fortune I can give you."

"I hope I may marry well, papa, for your sake; but--"

"Never mind me. You have only yourself to think about."

"But I never could marry any one I did not esteem, if the match were eversuch a brilliant one."

"Of course not. All schoolgirls talk like that; and in due course discoverhow very little esteem has to do with matrimony. If you mean that you wouldlike to marry some penniless wretch of a curate, or some insolvent ensign,for love, I can only say that the day of your marriage will witness ourfinal parting. I should not make any outrageous fuss or useless opposition,rely upon it. I should only wish you good-bye."

Clarissa smiled faintly at this speech. She expected so little from herfather, that his hardest words did not wound her very deeply, nor did theyextinguish that latent hope, "He will love me some day."

"I trust I may never be so imprudent as to lose you for ever, like that,papa.. I must shut my heart resolutely against curates."

"If bad reading is an abomination to you, you have only to open your ears.I have some confidence in you, Clary," Mr. Lovel went on, with a smilethat was almost affectionate. "You look like a sensible girl; a littleimpulsive, I daresay; but knowledge of the world--which is an uncommonlyhard world for you and me--will tone that down in good time. You areaccomplished, I hope. Madame Marot wrote me a most flourishing accountof your attainments; but one never knows how much to believe of aschoolmistress's analysis."

"I worked very hard, papa; all the harder because I was so anxious tocome home; and I fancied I might shorten my exile a little by being veryindustrious."

"Humph! You give yourself a good character. You sing and play, I suppose?"

"Yes, papa. But I am fonder of art than of music."

"Ah, art is very well as a profession; but amateur art--French plum-boxart--is worse than worthless. However, I am glad you can amuse yourselfsomehow; and I daresay, if you have to turn governess by-and-by, that sortof thing will be useful. You have the usual smattering of languages, ofcourse?"

"Yes, papa. We read German and Italian on alternate days at MadameMarot's."

"I _promessi Sposi_, and so on, no doubt. There is a noble Tasso in thebookcase yonder, and a fine old Petrarch, with which you may keep up yourItalian. You might read a little to me of an evening sometimes. I shouldnot mind it much."

"And I should like it very much, papa," Clarissa answered eagerly.

She was anxious for anything that could bring her father and herselftogether--that might lessen the gulf between them, if by ever so little.

And in this manner Miss Lovel's life began in her new home. No warmth ofwelcome, no word of fatherly affection, attended this meeting between afather and daughter who had not met for six years. Mr. Lovel went backto his books as calmly as if there had been no ardent impetuous girl ofeighteen under his roof, leaving Clarissa to find occupation and amusementas best she might. He was not a profound student; a literary triflerrather, caring for only a limited number of books, and reading those againand again. Burton's _Anatomy of Melancholy_, Southey's _Doctor_. Montaigne,and Swift, he read continually. He was a collector of rare editions ofthe Classics, and would dawdle over a Greek play, edited by some learnedGerman, for a week at a time, losing himself in the profundity of elaboratefoot-notes. He was an ardent admirer of the lighter Roman poets, andbelieved the Horatian philosophy the only true creed by which a man shouldshape his existence. But it must not be supposed that books brought reposeto the mind and heart of Marmaduke Lovel. He was a disappointed man, adiscontented man, a man given to brooding over the failure of his life,inclined to cherish vengeful feelings against his fellow-men on account ofthat failure. Books to him were very much what they might have been tosome fiery-tempered ambitious soldier of fortune buried alive in a prison,without hope of release,--some slight alleviation of his anguish, someoccasional respite from his dull perpetual pain; nothing more.

Clarissa's first day at Mill Cottage was a very fair sample of the rest ofher life. She found that she must manage to spend existence almost entirelyby herself--that she must expect the smallest amount of companionship fromher father.

"This is the room in which I generally sit," her father said to her thatfirst morning after breakfast; "my books are here, you see, and the aspectsuits me. The drawing-room will be almost entirely at your disposal. Wehave occasional callers, of course; I have not been able to make theseimpervious country people comprehend that I don't want society. Theysometimes pester me with invitations to dinner, which no doubt theyconsider an amazing kindness to a man in my position; invitations which Imake a point of declining. It will be different with you, of course; andif any eligible people--Lady Laura Armstrong or Mrs. Renthorpe forinstance--should like to take you up, I shall not object to your seeing alittle society. You will never find a rich husband at Mill Cottage."

"Please do not speak of husbands, papa. I don't want to be married, and Ishouldn't care to go into society without you."

"Nonsense, child; you will have to do what is best for your future welfare.Remember that my death will leave you utterly unprovided for--absolutelypenniless."

"I hope you may live till I am almost an old woman, papa."

"Not much chance of that; and even if I did, I should not care to have youon my hands all that time. A good marriage is the natural prospect of agood-looking young woman, and I shall be much disappointed if you do notmarry well, Clarissa."

The pale cold blue eyes looked at her with so severe a glance, as Mr. Lovelsaid this, that the girl felt she must expect little mercy from her fatherif her career in life did not realise his hopes.

"In short," he continued, "I look to you to redeem our fallen fortunes. Idon't want the name of Lovel to die out in poverty and obscurity. I look toyou to prevent that, Clarissa."

"Papa," said Clarissa, almost trembling as she spoke, "it is not to me youshould look for that. What can a girl do to restore a name that has falleninto obscurity? Even if I were to marry a rich man, as you say, it would beonly to take another name, and lose my own identity in that of my husband.It is only a son who can redeem his father's name. There is some one elseto whom you must look----"

"What!" cried her father vehemently, "have you not been forbidden tomention that name in my hearing? Unlucky girl, you seem to have been bornon purpose to outrage and pain me."

"Forgive me, papa; it shall be the last time. But O, is there no hope thatyou will ever pardon----"

"Pardon," echoed Mr. Lovel, with a bitter laugh; "it is no question ofpardon. I have erased that person's image from my mind. So far as I amconcerned, there is no such man in the world. Pardon! You must induce me toreinstate him in my memory again, before you ask me to pardon."

"And that can never be, papa?"

"Never!"

The tone of that one word annihilated hope in Clarissa's mind. She hadpushed the question to its utmost limit, at all hazards of offending herfather. What was it that her brother Austin had done to bring upon himselfthis bitter sentence of condemnation? She remembered him in his earlymanhood, handsome, accomplished, brilliant; the delight and admirationof every one who knew him, except her father. Recalling those days, sheremembered that between her father and Austin there had never been any showof affection. The talents and brilliant attributes that had won admirationfrom others seemed to have no charm in the father's eye. Clarissa couldremember many a sneering speech of Mr. Lovel's, in which he had made lightof his son's cleverness, denouncing his varied accomplishments as trivialand effeminate, and asking if any Englishman ever attained an honourabledistinction by playing the piano, or modelling in clay.

"I would rather have my son the dullest plodder that ever toiled at thebar, or droned bald platitudes from a pulpit, than the most brilliantdrawing-room idler, whose amateur art and amateur music ever made him thefashion of a single season, to leave him forgotten in the next. I utterlydespise an accomplished man."

Austin Lovel had let such speeches as this go by him with a languidindifference, that testified at once to his easy temper and his comfortabledisregard of his father's opinion. He was fond of his little sister Clary,in rather a careless way, and would suffer her companionship, juvenile asshe was at that time, with perfect good nature, allowing her to spoil hisdrawing paper with her untutored efforts, and even to explore the sacredmysteries of his colour-box. In return for this indulgence, the girl lovedhim with intense devotion, and believed in Him as the most brilliant ofmankind.

Clarissa Lovel recalled those departed days now with painful tenderness.How kind and gracious Austin had been to her! How happy they had beentogether! sometimes wandering for a whole day in the park and woods ofArden, he with his sketching apparatus, she with a volume of Sir WalterScott, to read aloud to him while he sketched, or to read him to sleep withvery often. And then what delight it had been to sit by his side while helay at full length upon the mossy turf, or half-buried in fern--to sit byhim supremely happy, reading or drawing, and looking up from her occupationevery now and then to glance at the sleeper's handsome face in lovingadmiration.

Those days had been the happiest of her life. When Austin left Arden, heseemed always to carry away the brightness of her existence with him; forwithout him her life was very lonely--a singularly joyless life for oneso young. Then, in an evil hour, as she thought, there came their finalparting. How well she remembered her brother loitering on the broad terracein front of Arden Court, in the dewy summer morning, waiting to bid hergood-bye! How passionately she had clung to him in that farewell embrace,unable to tear herself away, until her father's stern voice summoned her tothe carriage that was to take her on the first stage of her journey!

"Won't you come to the station with us, Austin?" she pleaded.

"No, Clary," her brother answered, with a glance at her father. "_He_ doesnot want me."

And so they had parted; never to meet any more upon this earth perhaps,Clarissa said to herself, in her dismal reveries to-day. "That stranger inthe railway-carriage spoke of his having emigrated. He will live and diefar away, perhaps on the other side of the earth, and I shall never see hisbright face again. O, Austin, Austin, is this the end of all our summerdays in Arden woods long ago!"

* * * * *

CHAPTER IV.

CLARISSA IS "TAKEN UP."

For some time there was neither change nor stir in Clarissa Lovel's newlife. It was not altogether an unpleasant kind of existence, perhaps, andMiss Lovel was inclined to make the best of it. She was very much her ownmistress, free to spend the long hours of her monotonous days according toher own pleasure. Her father exacted very little from her, and receivedher dutiful attentions with an air of endurance which was not particularlyencouraging. But Clarissa was not easily disheartened. She wanted towin her father's affection; and again and again, after every newdiscouragement, she told herself that there was no reason why she shouldnot ultimately succeed in making herself as dear to him as an only daughtershould be. It was only a question of time and patience. There was no reasonthat he should not love her, no possible ground for his coldness. It washis nature to be cold, perhaps; but those cold natures have often provedcapable of a single strong attachment. What happiness it would be to winthis victory of love!

"We stand almost alone in the world," she said to herself. "We had need bevery dear to each other."

So, though the time went by, and she made no perceptible progress towardsthis happy result, Clarissa did not despair. Her father tolerated her, andeven this was something; it seemed a great deal when she remembered herchildhood at Arden, in which she had never known what it was to be in herfather's society for an hour at a time, and when, but for chance meetingsin corridors and on staircases, she would very often have lived for weeksunder the same roof with him without seeing his face or hearing his voice.

Now it was all different; she was a woman now, and Mill Cottage wasscarcely large enough to accommodate two separate existences, even had Mr.Lovel been minded to keep himself aloof from his daughter. This being so,he tolerated her, treating her with a kind of cold politeness, which mighthave been tolerably natural in some guardian burdened with the charge ofa ward he did not care for. They rarely met until dinner-time, Clarissataking her breakfast about three hours before her father left his room. Butat seven they dined together, and spent the long winter evenings in eachother's company, Clarissa being sometimes permitted to read aloud in Germanor Italian, while her father lay back in his easy-chair, smoking hismeerschaum, and taking the amber mouthpiece from his lips now and then tocorrect an accent or murmur a criticism on the text. Sometimes, too, Mr.Lovel would graciously expound a page or two of a Greek play, or dilate onthe subtilty of some learned foot-note, for his daughter's benefit, butrather with the air of one gentleman at his club inviting the sympathy ofanother gentleman than with the tone of a father instructing his child.

Sometimes, but very rarely, they had company. Mr. Oliver and his wife woulddine with them occasionally, or the Vicar of Arden, a grave bachelor offive-and-thirty, would drop in to spend an hour or two of an evening. Butbesides these they saw scarcely any one. The small professional men ofHolborough Mr. Lovel held in supreme contempt, a contempt of which thosegentlemen themselves were thoroughly aware; the country people whom he hadbeen accustomed to receive at Arden Court he shrank from with a secretsense of shame, in these days of his fallen fortunes. He had therefore madefor himself a kind of hermit life at Mill Cottage; and his acquaintancehad come, little by little, to accept this as his established manner ofexistence. They still called upon the recluse occasionally, and sent himcards for their state dinners, averse from any neglect of a man whohad once occupied a great position among them; but they were no longersurprised when Mr. Lovel pleaded his feeble health as a reason fordeclining their hospitality. A very dull life for a girl, perhaps; but forClarissa it was not altogether an unhappy life. She was at an age when agirl can make an existence for herself out of bright young fancies andvague deep thoughts. There was that in her life just now which fades andperishes with the passing of years; a subtle indescribable charm, a senseof things beyond the common things of daily life. If there had been acloser bond of union between her father and herself, if there had notbeen that dark cloud upon her brother's life, she might have made herselfentirely happy; she might almost have forgotten that Arden was sold, anda vulgar mercantile stranger lord of those green slopes and broad ancientterraces she loved so well.

As it was, the loneliness of her existence troubled her very little. Shehad none of that eager longing for "society" or "fashion" wherewith youngladies who live in towns are apt to inoculate one another. She had nodesire to shine, no consciousness of her own beauty; for the French girlsat Madame Marot's had been careful not to tell her that her pale patricianface was beautiful. She wished for nothing but to win her father's love,and to bring about some kind of reconciliation between him and Austin.So the autumn deepened into winter, and the winter brightened into earlyspring, without bringing any change to her life. She had her colour-box andher easel, her books and piano, for her best companions; and if she didnot make any obvious progress towards gaining her father's affection,she contrived, at any rate, to avoid rendering her presence in any wayobnoxious to him.

Two or three times in the course of the winter Mrs. Oliver gave a littlemusical party, at which Clarissa met the small gentry of Holborough, whopronounced her a very lovely girl, and pitied her because of her father'sruined fortunes. To her inexperience these modest assemblies seemed theperfection of gaiety; and she would fain have accepted the invitations thatfollowed them, from the wives of Holborough bankers and lawyers and medicalmen to whom she had been introduced. Against this degradation, however, Mr.Lovel resolutely opposed himself.

"No, Clarissa," he said, sternly; "you must enter society under suchauspices as I should wish, or you must be content to remain at home. Ican't have a daughter of mine hawked about in that petty Holborough set.Lady Laura will be at Hale Castle by-and-by, I daresay. If she chooses totake you up, she can do so. Pretty girls are always at par in a countryhouse, and at the Castle you would meet people worth knowing."

Clarissa sighed. Those cordial Holborough gentry had been so kind to her,and this exclusiveness of her father's chilled her, somehow. It seemed toadd a new bitterness to their poverty--to that poverty, by the way, ofwhich she had scarcely felt the sharp edges yet awhile. Things went verysmoothly at Mill Cottage. Her father lived luxuriously, after his quietfashion. One of the best wine-merchants at the West-end of London suppliedhis claret; Fortnum and Mason furnished the condiments and foreign raritieswhich were essential for his breakfast-table. There seemed never any lackof money, or only when Clarissa ventured to hint at the scantiness of herschool-wardrobe, on which occasion Mr. Lovel looked very grave, and put heroff with two or three pounds to spend at the Holborough draper's.

"I should want so many new clothes if I went to the Castle, papa," shesaid, rather sadly one day, when her father was talking of Lady LauraArmstrong; but Mr. Lovel only shrugged his shoulders.

"A young woman is always well dressed in a white muslin gown," he said,carelessly. "I daresay a few pounds would get you all you want."

The Castle was a noble old place at Hale, a village about six miles fromHolborough. It had been the family seat of the Earl of Roxham ever sincethe reign of Edward VI.; but, on the Roxham race dying out, some fiftyyears before this, had become the property of a certain Mr. Armstrong, acivilian who had made a great fortune in the East, in an age when greatfortunes were commonly made by East-Indian traders. His only son hadbeen captain in a crack regiment, and had sold out of the army after hisfather's death, in order to marry Lady Laura Challoner, second daughter ofthe Earl of Calderwood, a nobleman of ancient lineage and decayed fortunes,and to begin life as a country gentleman under her wise governance. TheArmstrongs were said to be a very happy couple; and if the master of HaleCastle was apt to seem something of a cipher in his own house, the housewas an eminently agreeable one, and Lady Laura popular with all classes.Her husband adored her, and had surrendered his judgment to her guidancewith a most supreme faith in her infallibility. Happily, she exercised herpower with that subtle tact which is the finest gift of woman, and hisworst enemies could scarcely call Frederick Armstrong a henpecked husband.

The spring and early summer brought no change to Clarissa's life. She hadbeen at home for the greater part of a year, and in all that time one dayhad resembled another almost us closely as in the scholastic monotony ofexistence at Madame Marot's. And yet the girl had shaped no complaint aboutthe dulness of this tranquil routine, even in her inmost unspoken thoughts.She was happy, after a quiet fashion. She had a vague sense that there wasa broader, grander kind of life possible to womanhood; a life as differentfrom her own as the broad river that lost itself in the sea was differentfrom the placid mill-stream that bounded her father's orchard. But shehad no sick fretful yearning for that wider life. To win her father'saffection, to see her brother restored to his abandoned home--these wereher girlish dreams and simple unselfish hopes.

In all the months Clarissa Lovel had spent at Mill Cottage she had nevercrossed the boundary of that lost domain she loved so well. There was arustic bridge across the mill-stream, and a wooden gate opening into Ardenwoods. Clarissa very often stood by this gate, leaning with folded armsupon the topmost bar, and looking into the shadowy labyrinth of beech andpine with sad dreamy eyes, but she never went beyond the barrier. HonestMartha asked her more than once why she never walked in the wood, whichwas so much pleasanter than the dusty high-road, or even Arden common, anundulating expanse of heathy waste beyond the village, where Clarissa wouldroam for hours on the fine spring days, with a sketch-book under her arm.The friendly peasant woman could not understand that obstinate avoidance ofa beloved scene--that sentiment which made her lost home seem to Clarissa athing to shrink from, as she might have shrunk from beholding the face ofthe beloved dead.

It was bright midsummer weather, a glorious prolific season, with thethermometer ranging between seventy and eighty, when Lady Laura Armstrongdid at last make her appearance at Mill Cottage. The simple old-fashionedgarden was all aglow with roses; the house half-hidden beneath theluxuriance of foliage and flowers, a great magnolia on one side climbing upto the dormer windows, on the other pale monthly roses, and odorous goldenand crimson tinted honeysuckle. Lady Laura was in raptures with the place.She found Clarissa sitting in a natural arbour made by a group of oldhawthorns and a wild plum-tree, and placed herself at once upon a footingof perfect friendliness and familiarity with the girl. Mr. Lovel was out--arare occurrence. He had gone for a stroll through the village with Ponto.

"And why are you not with him?" asked Lady Laura, who, like most of theseclever managing women, had a knack of asking questions. "You must be abetter companion than Ponto."

"Papa does not think so. He likes walking alone. He likes to be quite freeto dream about his books, I fancy, and it bores him rather to have totalk."

"Not a very lively companion for you, I fear. Why, child, how dismal yourlife must be!"

"O, no; not dismal. It is very quiet, of course; but I like a quiet life."

"But you go to a good many parties, I suppose, in Holborough and theneighbourhood? I know the Holborough people are fond of giving parties, andare quite famous for Croquet."

"Yes; I know the Olivers very well indeed. Remarkably pleasant people."

"And I don't even know how to play croquet."

"Why, my poor benighted child, in what a state of barbarism this father ofyours is bringing you up! How are you ever to marry and take your placein the world? And with your advantages, too! What can the man be dreamingabout? I shall talk to him very seriously. We are quite old friends, youknow, my dear, and I can venture to say what I like to him. You must cometo me immediately. I shall have a houseful of people in a week or two,and you shall have a peep at the gay world. Poor little prison flower! nowonder you look thoughtful and pale. And now show me your garden, please,Miss Lovel. We can stroll about till your father comes home; I mean to talkto him _at once_."

Energy was one of the qualities of her own character for which LauraArmstrong especially valued herself. She was always doing something orother which she was not actually called upon by her own duty or by thedesire of other people to do, and she was always eager to do it "at once."She had come to Mill Cottage intending to show some kindness to ClarissaLovel, whose father and her own father, the Earl of Calderwood, had beenfirm friends in the days when the master of Arden entertained the county;and Clarissa's manner and appearance having impressed her most favourably,she was eager to do her immediate service, to have her at the Castle, andshow her to the world, and get her a rich husband if possible.

In honest truth, this Lady Laura Armstrong was a kindly disposed,sympathetic woman, anxious to make the best of the opportunities whichProvidence had given her with so lavish a hand, and to do her duty towardsher less fortunate neighbours. The office of Lady Bountiful, the positionof patroness, suited her humour. Her active frivolous nature, which spurnedrepose, and yet never rose above trifles, found an agreeable occupation inthe exercise of this kind of benign influence upon other people's lives.Whether she would have put herself seriously out of the way for the benefitof any of these people to whom she was so unfailingly beneficent, was aquestion which circumstances had never yet put to the test. Her benevolencehad so far been of a light, airy kind, which did not heavily tax her bodilyor mental powers, or even the ample resources of her purse.

She was a handsome woman, after a fair, florid, rather redundant styleof beauty, and was profoundly skilled in all those arts of costume anddecoration by which such beauty is improved. A woman of middle height, witha fine figure, a wealth of fair hair, and an aquiline nose of the truepatrician type, her admirers said. The mouth was rather large, but redeemedby a set of flashing teeth and a winning smile; the chin inclined to be ofthat order called "double;" and indeed a tendency to increasing stoutnesswas one of the few cares which shadowed Lady Laura's path. She wasfive-and-thirty, and had only just begun to tell herself that she was nolonger a girl. She got on admirably with Clarissa, as she informed herhusband afterwards when she described the visit.

The girl was fascinated at once by that frank cordial manner, and was quiteready to accept Lady Laura for her friend, ready to be patronised by hereven, with no sense of humiliation, no lurking desire to revolt against thekind of sovereignty with which her new friend took possession of her.

Mr. Lovel came strolling in by-and-by, with his favourite tan setter,looking as cool as if there were no such thing as blazing midsummersunshine, and found the two ladies sauntering up and down the grassy walkby the mill-stream, under the shadow of gnarled old pear and quince trees.He was charmed to see his dear Lady Laura. Clarissa had never known himso enthusiastic or so agreeable. It was quite a new manner which he puton--the manner of a man who is still interested in life. Lady Laura beganalmost at once with her reproaches. How could he be so cruel to this dearchild? How could he be so absurd as to bury her alive in this way?

"She visits no one, I hear," cried the lady; "positively no one."

"Humph! she has been complaining, has she?" said Mr. Lovel, with a sharpglance at his daughter.

"Complaining! O no, papa! I have told Lady Laura that I do not care aboutgaiety, and that you do not allow me to visit."

"_Aut Caesar aut nullus_--the best or nothing. I don't want Clarissa to begadding about to all the tea-drinkings in Holborough; and if I let her goto one house, I must let her go to all"

"But you will let her come to me?"

"That is the best, my dear Lady Laura. Yes, of course she may come to you,whenever you may please to be troubled with her."

"Then I please to be troubled with her immediately. I should like to carryher away with me this afternoon, if it were possible; but I suppose thatcan't be--there will be a trunk to be packed, and so on. When will youcome to me, Miss Lovel? Do you know, I am strongly tempted to call youClarissa?"

"I should like it so much better," the girl answered, blushing.

"What! may I? Then I'm sure I will. It's such a pretty name, reminding oneof that old novel of Richardson's, which everybody quotes and no one everseems to have read. When will you come, Clarissa?"

"Give her a week," said her father; "she'll want a new white muslin gown, Idaresay; young women always do when they are going visiting."

"Now, pray don't let her trouble herself about anything of that kind; mymaid shall see to all that sort of thing. We will make her look her best,depend upon it. I mean this visit to be a great event in her life, Mr.Lovel, if possible."

"Don't let there be any fuss or trouble about her. Every one knows that Iam poor, and that she will be penniless when I am gone. Let her wear herwhite muslin gown, and give her a corner to sit in. People may take her forone of your children's governesses, if they choose; but if she is to seesociety, I am glad for her to see the best."

"People shall not take her for one of my governesses; they shall take herfor nothing less than Miss Lovel of Arden. Yes, of Arden, my dear sir;don't frown, I entreat you. The glory of an old house like that clings tothose who bear the old name, even though lands and house are gone--MissLovel, of Arden, By the way, how do you get on with your neighbour, Mr.Granger?"

"I do not get on with him at all. He used to call upon me now and then,but I suppose he fancied, or saw somehow or other--though I am sure I waslaboriously civil to him--that I did not care much for his visits; at anyrate, he dropped them. But he is still rather obtrusively polite in sendingme game and hot-house fruit and flowers at odd times, in return for whichfavours I can send him nothing but a note of thanks--'Mr. Level presentshis compliments to Mr. Granger, and begs to acknowledge, with best thanks,&c."--the usual formula."

"I am so sorry you have not permitted him to know you," replied Lady Laura."We saw a good deal of him last year--such a charming man! what one mayreally call a typical man--the sort of person the French describe assolid---_Carre par la base_--a perfect block of granite; and then, so_enormously_ rich!"

Lady Laura glanced at Clarissa, as if she were inspired with some suddenidea. She was subject to a sudden influx of ideas, and always fancied herideas inspirations. She looked at Clarissa, and repeated, with a meditativeair, "So _enormously_ rich!"

"There is a grown-up daughter, too," said Mr. Lovel; "rather astiff-looking young person. I suppose she is solid, too."

"She is not so charming as her father," replied Lady Laura, with whom thatfavourite adjective served for everything in the way of praise. To her thePyramids and Niagara, a tropical thunderstorm, a mazourka by Chopin, and aParisian bonnet, were all alike charming. "I suppose solidity isn't so nicein a girl," she went on, laughing; "but certainly Sophia Granger is notsuch a favourite with me as her father is. I suppose she will make abrilliant marriage, however, sooner or later, unattractive as she may be;for she'll have a superb fortune,--unless, indeed, her father should takeit into his head to marry again."

"Scarcely likely that, I should think, after seventeen years of widowhood.Why, Granger must be at least fifty." "My dear Mr. Lovel, I hope you arenot going to call that a great age."

"My dear Lady Laura, am I likely to do so, when my own fiftieth birthdayis an event of the past? But I shouldn't suppose Granger to be a marryingman," he added meditatively; "such an idea has never occurred to mein conjunction with him." And here he glanced ever so slightly at hisdaughter. "That sort of granite man must take a great deal of thawing."

"There are suns that will melt the deepest snows," answered the lady,laughing. "Seriously, I am sorry you will not suffer him to know you. ButI must run away this instant; my unfortunate ponies will be wonderingwhat has become of me. You see this dear girl and I have got on so welltogether, that I have been quite unconscious of time; and I had ever somany more calls to make, but those must be put off to another day. Letme see; this is Tuesday, I shall send a carriage for you, this day week,Clarissa, soon after breakfast, so that I may have you with me at luncheon.Good-bye."

Lady Laura kissed her new _protegee_ at parting. She was really fond ofeverything young and bright and pretty; and having come to Mr. Lovel'shouse intending to perform a social duty, was delighted to find that theduty was so easy and pleasant to her. She was always pleased with newacquaintances, and was apt to give her friendship on the smallestprovocation. On the other hand, there came a time when she grew just alittle weary of these dear sweet friends, and began to find them lesscharming than of old; but she was never uncivil to them; they alwaysremained on her list, and received stray gleams from the sunlight of herpatronage.

"Well," said Mr. Lovel interrogatively, when the mistress of Hale Castlehad driven off, in the lightest and daintiest of phaetons, with a modelgroom and a pair of chestnut cobs, which seemed perfection, even inYorkshire, where every man is a connoisseur in horseflesh. "Well, child, Itold you that you might go into society if Lady Laura Armstrong took youup, but I scarcely expected her to be as cordial as she has been to-day.Nothing could have been better than the result of her visit; she seemedquite taken with you, Clary."

It was almost the first time her father had ever called her Clary. It wasonly a small endearment, but she blushed and sparkled into smiles atthe welcome sound. He saw the smile and blush, but only thought she wasdelighted with the idea of this visit to the Castle. He had no notionthat the placid state of indifference which he maintained towards her wasotherwise than agreeable to her feelings. He was perfectly civil to her,and he never interfered with her pursuits or inclinations. What more couldshe want from a father?

Perhaps she assumed a new value in his eyes from the time of that visit ofLady Laura's. He was certainly kinder to her than usual, the girlthought, as they sat on the lawn in the balmy June evening, sipping theirafter-dinner coffee, while the moon rose fair and pale above the woods ofArden Court. He contemplated her with a meditative air now and then, whenshe was not looking his way. He had always known that she was beautiful,but her beauty had acquired a new emphasis from Lady Laura Armstrong'spraises. A woman of the world of that class was not likely to be deceived,or to mistake the kind of beauty, likely to influence mankind; and in thedim recesses of his mind there grew up a new hope--very vague and shadowy;he despised himself for dwelling upon it so weakly--a hope that made himkinder to his daughter than he had ever been yet--a hope which rendered herprecious to him all at once. Not that he loved her any better than of old;it was only that he saw how, if fortune favoured him, this girl mightrender him the greatest service that could be done for him by any humancreature.

She might marry Daniel Granger, and win back the heritage he had lost.It was a foolish thought, of course; Mr. Lovel was quite aware of thesupremity of folly involved in it. This Granger might be the last man inthe world to fall in love with a girl younger than his daughter; he mightbe as impervious to beauty as the granite to which Laura Armstrong hadlikened him. It was a foolish fancy, a vain hope; but it served to brightenthe meditations of Marmaduke Lovel--who had really very few pleasantsubjects to think about--with a faint rosy glow.

"It is the idlest dream," he said to himself. "When did good luck ever comemy way? But O, to hold Arden Court again--by any tie--to die knowing thatmy race would inherit the old gray walls!"

* * * * *

CHAPTER V.

AT HALE CASTLE.

Mr. Lovel gave his daughter twenty pounds; a stretch of liberality whichdid not a little astonish her. She was very grateful for this unexpectedkindness; and her father was fain to submit to be kissed and praised forhis goodness more than was entirely agreeable to him. But he had beenkinder to her ever since Lady Laura's visit, and her heart was very lightunder that genial influence. She thought he was beginning to love her, andthat belief made her happy.

Nor was there anything but unqualified pleasure for her in the possessionof twenty pounds--the largest sum she had ever had at her disposal.Although the solitude of her life and the troubles that overshadowed it hadmade her thoughtful beyond her years, she was still young enough to be ableto put aside all thought, and to live in the present. It was very pleasantto go into Holborough, with those four crisp new five-pound notes in herpurse, to ask her aunt's advice about her purchases. Mrs. Oliver wasenraptured to hear of the visit to the Castle, but naturally a littledespondent about the circumstances under which the visit was to be paid.That Clarissa should go to Lady Laura's without a maid was eminentlydistressing to her aunt.

"I really think you ought to take Peters," Mrs. Oliver said meditatively."She is a most reliable person; and of course nobody need know that she isnot your own maid. I can fully rely upon her discretion for not breathing aword upon the subject to any of the Castle servants."

Peters was a prim middle-aged spinster, with a small waist and a painfullyerect figure, who combined the office of parlour-maid at the Rectory withthat of personal attendant upon the Rector's wife--a person whom Clarissahad always regarded with a kind of awe--a lynx-eyed woman, who could see ata glance the merest hint of a stray hair-pin in a massive coil of plaits,or the minutest edge of a muslin petticoat, visible below the hem of adress.

"O no, aunt; please don't think of such a thing!" the girl cried eagerly."I could not go with a borrowed servant; and I don't want a maid at all; Iam used to do everything for myself Besides, Lady Laura did not ask me tobring a maid."

"She would take that for granted. She would never expect Mr. Lovel'sdaughter to travel without a maid."

"But papa told her how poor he was."

"Very unnecessary, and very bad taste on his part, I think. But of courseshe would not suppose him to be too poor to maintain a proper establishmentin a small way. People of that kind only understand poverty in the broadestsense."

Mrs. Oliver consented to forego the idea of sending Peters to the Castle,with a regretful sigh; and then the two ladies went out shopping--Clarissain high spirits; her aunt depressed by a conviction, that she would notmake her first entrance into society with the surroundings that befitted aLovel of Arden Court.

There seemed so many things indispensable for this all-important visit.The twenty pounds were nearly gone by the time Miss Lovel's shopping wasfinished. A white muslin dress for ordinary occasions, some white gauzyfabric for a more important toilette, a golden-brown silk walking or dinnerdress, a white areophane bonnet, a gray straw hat and feather, gloves,boots, slippers, and a heap of feminine trifles. Considerable managementand discretion were required to make the twenty pounds go far enough: butMrs. Oliver finished her list triumphantly, leaving one bright goldensovereign in Clarissa's purse. She gave the girl two more sovereigns atparting with her.

"You will want as much as that for the servants when you are coming away,Clary," she said imperatively, as Clarissa protested against this gift. "Idon't suppose you will be called upon to spend a shilling for anything elseduring your visit, unless there should happen to be a charity sermon whileyou are at Hale. In that case, pray don't put less than half-a-crown inthe plate. Those things are noticed so much. And now, good-bye, my dear. Idon't suppose I shall see you again between this, and Tuesday. MissMallow will come to you to try-on the day after to-morrow at one o'clock,remember; be sure you are at home. She will have hard work to get yourthings ready in time; but I shall look in upon her once or twice, to keepher up to the mark. Pray do your best to secure Lady Laura's friendship.Such an acquaintance as that is all-important to a girl in your position."

Tuesday came very quickly, as it seemed to Clarissa, who grew a littlenervous about this visit among strangers, in a great strange house, as itcame nearer. She had seen the outside of the Castle very often: a vastfeudal pile it seemed, seen across the bright river that flowed beneathits outward wall--a little darksome and gloomy at the best, Clarissa hadthought, and something too grand to make a pleasant habitation. Shehad never seen the inner quadrangle, in all its splendour of modernrestoration--sparkling freestone, fresh from the mason's chisel; gothicwindows, glowing with rare stained glass; and the broad fertile gardens,with their terraces and banks of flowers, crowded together to make a feastof colour, sloping down to the setting sun.

It was still the same bright midsummer weather--a blue sky without a cloud,a look upon earth and heaven as if there would never be rain again, oranything but this glow and glory of summer. At eleven o'clock thecarriage came from the Castle; Clarissa's trunks and travelling-bag wereaccommodated somehow; and the girl bade her father good-bye.

"I daresay I shall be asked to dinner while you are there," he said, asthey were parting, "and I may possibly come; I shall be curious to see howyou get on."

"O, pray do come, papa; I'm sure it will do you good."

And then she kissed him affectionately, emboldened by that softer mannerwhich he had shown towards her lately; and the carriage drove off. Abeautiful drive past fertile fields, far stretching towards that brightriver, which wound its sinuous way through all this part of the country;past woods that shut in both sides of the road with a solemn gloom even atmidday--woods athwart which one caught here and there a distant glimpse ofsome noble old mansion lying remote within the green girdle of a park.

It was something less than an hour's drive from Arden to Hale: thevillage-church clock and a great clock in the Castle stables were bothstriking twelve as the carriage drove under a massive stone arch, abovewhich the portcullis still hung grimly. It was something like going intoa prison, Clarissa thought; but she had scarcely time for the reflection,when the carriage swept round a curve in the smooth gravel road, and shesaw the sunny western front of the Castle, glorious in all its brightnessof summer flowers, and with a tall fountain leaping and sparkling uptowards the blue sky.

She gave a little cry of rapture at sight of so much brightness and beauty,coming upon her all at once with a glad surprise. There were no humancreatures visible; only the glory of fountain and flowers. It might havebeen the palace of the Sleeping Beauty, deep in the heart of the woodlands,for any evidence to the contrary, perceptible to Clarissa in this drowsynoontide; but presently, as the carriage drove up to the hall door, adog barked, and then a sumptuous lackey appeared, and anon another, who,between them, took Miss Lovel's travelling-bag and parasol, prior toescorting her to some apartment, leaving the heavier luggage to meanerhands.

"The saloon, or my lady's own room, miss?" one of the grandiose creaturesdemanded languidly.

"I would rather see Lady Laura alone at first, if you please."

The man bowed, and conducted her up a broad staircase, lined with darksomepictures of battles by land and sea, along a crimson-carpeted corridorwhere there were many doors, to one particular portal at the southern end.

He opened this with a lofty air, and announced "Miss Lovel."

It was a very large room--all the rooms in this newly-restored part of theCastle were large and lofty (a great deal of the so-called "restoration"had indeed been building, and many of these splendid rooms were new, newereven than the wealth of Frederick Armstrong)--a large room, furnished withchairs and tables and cabinets of satin wood, with oval medallions of paleblue Wedgwood let into the panelled doors of the cabinets, and a narrowbeading of lustreless gold here and there; a room with pale bluesilken hangings, and a carpet of white wood-anemones scattered on aturquoise-coloured ground. There were no pictures; art was represented onlyby a few choice bronzes and a pair of Venetian mirrors.

Lady Laura was busy at a writing-table, filling in the blanks in some notesof invitation. She was always busy. On one table there were an easel andthe appliances of illumination; a rare old parchment Missal lying open, andmy lady's copy of a florid initial close beside it. On a small reading-deskthere was an open Tasso with a couple of Italian dictionaries near athand. Lady Laura had a taste for languages, and was fond of reviving heracquaintance with foreign classics. She was really the most indefatigableof women. It was a pity, perhaps, that her numerous accomplishments andher multifarious duties towards society at large left her so very littleleisure to bestow upon her own children; but then, they had their foreigngovernesses, and maids--there was one poor English drudge, by the way, whoseemed like a stranger in a far land--gifted in many tongues, and beganto imbibe knowledge from their cradles. To their young imaginations thenursery wing of Hale Castle must have seemed remarkably like the Tower ofBabel.

The lady of the Castle laid down her pen, and received Clarissa with warmaffection. She really liked the girl. It was only a light airy kind ofliking, perhaps, in unison with her character; but, so far as it went, itwas perfectly sincere.

"My dear child, I am so glad to have you here," she said, placing MissLovel beside her on a low sofa. "You will find me dreadfully busysometimes, I daresay; but you must not think me neglectful if I cannot bevery much with you downstairs. You are to come in and out of this roomwhenever you please. It is not open to the world at large, you know, and Iam supposed to be quite inaccessible here; but it is open to my favourites,and I mean you to be one of them, Clarissa."

"You are very good, dear Lady Laura."

"No, I am not good; I daresay I am the most selfish creature inChristendom; but when I like people, I like them with all my heart. And nowtell me what you think of Hale."

"It is lovely--it is like fairyland."

"Yes, it is pretty, isn't it, this new side? It has all been done in mytime--it has all been my doing, indeed, I may venture to say; for Fredwould have gone on living contentedly in the old rooms till his dying day.You can't imagine the trouble I took. I read no end of books upon thedomestic architecture of the middle ages, went all over England hunting formodel houses, and led the poor architect a fine life. But I think, betweenus, we succeeded in carrying out a very fine idea at last. The crenellatedroof, with its machicolations, is considered a great success. There was atime when one was obliged to get a license from the sovereign to build thatkind of thing; but it is all changed now. The sovereign is not afraid ofrebellion, and the machicolations are only for ornament. You have not seenthe old hall yet. That is splendid--a real original bit of the Castle, youknow, which has never been tampered with, as old as Edward III., with araised platform at the upper end, where the lord of the castle used to sitwhile his vassals ate below him; and with a stone hearth in the centre,where they used to make their wood fires, all the smoke going through anopening in the roof--rather pleasant for my lord and his vassals, I shouldthink! Take off your hat, Clarissa; or perhaps you would rather go to yourroom at once. Yes, you shall, dear; and I'll finish my letters, and we canmeet at luncheon."

The maid conducted Miss Lovel to a charming chintz-curtained bedroom on thesecond floor, looking westward over those gorgeous flower-banks; a bedroomwith a bright-looking brass bedstead, and the daintiest chintz-patternedcarpet, and nothing medieval about it except the stone-framed gothicwindow.

"I will send a person to unpack your trunks, miss," the maid said, when shehad listened with a deferential air to Clarissa's praise of the room. "Iam very glad you like your rooms; my lady was most anxious you should bepleased. I'll send Fosset miss; she is a very handy young person, and willbe always at your service to render you any assistance you may require."

"Thank you--I am not likely to trouble her often; there is so very littleassistance I ever want. Sometimes, when I am putting on an evening dress, Imay ask for a little help perhaps--that is all."

"She will be quite at your service, miss: I hope you will not scruple toring for her," the chief of the maids replied, and then made a dignifiedexit.

The maid of inferior degree, Fosset, speedily appeared; apale-complexioned, meek-looking young woman, who set about unpackingClarissa's trunks with great skill and quickness, and arranged theircontents in the capacious maple wardrobe, while their owner washed her faceand hands and brushed the dust of her brief journey out of her dark brownhair. A clamorous bell rang out the summons to the midday meal presently,and Clarissa went down to the hall, where a watchful footman took her incharge.

"Luncheon is served in the octagon room, miss," he said, and straightwayled her away to an apartment in an angle of the Castle: a room with aheavily-carved oak ceiling, and four mullioned windows overlooking theriver; a room hung with gilt and brown stamped leather, and furnished inthe most approved mediaeval style. There was an octagon table, bright withfruit and flowers, and a good many ladies seated round it, with only hereand there a gentleman.

There was one of these gentlemen standing near Lady Laura's chair asClarissa went into the room, tall and stout, with a very fair good-naturedcountenance, light blue eyes, and large light whiskers, whom, by reasonof some careless remarks of her father's, she guessed at once to be Mr.Armstrong; a gentleman of whom people were apt to say, after the shortestacquaintance, that there was not much in him, but that he was the bestfellow in the world--an excellent kind of person to be intrusted with thedisposal of a large fortune, a man by whom his neighbours could profitwithout a too painful sense of obligation, and who was never so happy aswhen a crowd of people were enjoying life at his expense. Friends who meantto say something very generous of Frederick Armstrong were wont to observe,